Military AircrewA forum for the professionals who fly the non-civilian hardware, and the backroom boys and girls without whom nothing would leave the ground. Army, Navy and Airforces of the World, all equally welcome here.
I am not a nostalgia junkie and I definitely believe things have moved on since the mighty F4, mostly for the better, but the Phantom will be viewed rightly as a classic and a thoroughbred. In it's time with the RAF and RN it did nearly everything - recce, air defence, ground attack, strike and flying girlie ATCs around. It was tough, fast, carried a big payload and went a fair distance with it. When Tranche 2 Eurofighter finally makes it into service the RAF will get as versatile an aircraft as the F4, but not until then. I'll be way too old to fly fast jets by then.
I will never forget my frst F4 trip, out of Coningsby one cold, clear day. The jet was clean, we were airborne by the cable, went into a 70 degree climb and the earth dropped away from us. Magic. Out over the Wash, into an impromptu fight with some USAF F4s, and home with the 'mission over' light on. And they paid me for it!
I loved it, flew 3 tours in it, went all over the place in it and it got me home every time. It was a great jet.
Dark Helmet,
We were at Weathersfield at the same time. I was on 56 then, living in those huts in the bullpen. That was a nice summer, as I recall it.
Anybody remember the beginning of the FGR2 at Coningsby in 1968 when the ginger beers managed to set the operation up as a centralised servicing empire? I enjoyed witnessing the confrontation one happy hour between OC 6 Sqn and OC Eng. The chief ginger beer had the audacity to forcibly point out that he personally had set this system up and if OC 6 managed to change it to sqn servicing then he OC Eng would resign - he did and he did!
After that we no longer had to take dayglo canopeners to Akrotiri to stick on the tails to show everyone that we were a sqn.
Certainly do - was on 1 Course and can remember all the hassle of centalised servicing. Was glad to go to RAFG. On return Coningsby had returned to reality
Wee Jock, was your F4 pin made out of an old Penny by a guy at Wainfleet?
The closest I got to an airborne toom was at Wainfleet when 78TFS used to do their range clear flypasts to check for hung ordnance. We used stand on the balcony of the old tower at approx 35 Feet AGL and try to check the underside of the aircraft.
We never did see the underside as they used to scream past at 420kts at the same level as us with the Pilot and WSO waving frantically.
Spent 3 Years at CGY having a ball, used to love working nights in the tower watching burner take-offs and nipping out to the caravan to watch cable engagements.
More nostalgia from the days of Olly Harvest in Akrotiri when OC U2s was boasting about the climb rate of his straight wing photocruisers. He got as far as claiming outrageous capabilities when I challenged him to a climbing contest the following morning at o'dark thirty. Because we had to wait on the threshold for his outriggers to be removed from the runway, we didn't get to barrel roll around him until 10.000ft - but that was enough to win the barrel of Keo he wagered.
Guess he learned not to confuse climb angle with climb rate!
Maxburner,
Yes, it was a glorious summer that year. I still have fond memories of sitting around outside the line hut under our -'borrowed' Greene King pub parasol and furniture! How we managed to get it and 4 of us all in the back of our Bedford CF during a supper run I will never know! Of course it was the company and the banter that made it special!
I do remember the bullpen as we had to move our F4s there for safe keeping every weekend.
Obviously you are not able to make a "sticky" out of all the aircraft types ppruners wish to vent their nostalgia on but how about this one - at least for a while. The sticky Victor thread was posted and made a sticky a while ago but it has less viewings and has not had a post since 4 April. The Phantom was our only frontline fighter for many years and our first successful multi-role aircraft since the Spitfire - go on, make an old man happy and give it "sticky" firsts for a while, at least.
I believe that the engines for Thrust SSC came from the Boscombe Down Phantom XT 597, a pre-series F-4K. Not many individual engine units have been to M2.0 in the air and M1.0+ on the ground!
For a non-expert, would someone be kind enough to briefly explain the main differences in performance between the U.K.'s Spey-engined F-4's, and the J79 version, please?
Also, some decent U.K. Phantom piccies here > www.aviation-picture-hangar.co.uk/Phantom.html
Location: Quite near 'An aerodrome somewhere in England'
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The Spey Phantom, known in the late '60s as the 50:50 Phantom (but not by anyone in the RAF!), was suppoesd to use a domestic engine to offest the procurement costs. The Spey produced more thrust at low level and mud moving speeds, but the greater intake drag ruined its high speed and high Mach capability. However, it was bought primarily as a mud mover, not as an AD fighter.
When the putrid pussy came into service, the Phantom assumed an Air Defence role. The engines were far less robust than the reliable, almost bullet proof J79 - but good enough in the end.
The FG1 and FGR2 both had the Spey; FG1 was ex-Royal Navy and had no HF, no INS, folding wings and a slotted tailplane. FGR2 was the definitive RAF version.
In 1983-4 the RAF acquired a squadron of F-4Js from the desert scrapyard. At a time when other air forces were buying F16s and F18s, the US were astonished. "F-4s? - sure you don't mean F-14s?". They were tested and the 74 sqn crews converted to them at North Island, California and they were trailed home on OP TIGER TRAIL 1 to 5 in 1983-4 by VC10Ks operating out of Miramar. The trail I did was Miramar - Dayton Goose - UK; the F4s went via Wright-Patterson. At that time the VC10K wasn't cleared to pass JP-4 through the pods, so we had to pick up Jet-A1 from civil airports instead. The leg from Dayton/W-P to Goose was also my instrument rating test - that's the way we did things back then!
In RAF service, contrary to what many may think, the F4J was never termed the Phantom F3 - that was invented by the spotter magazines - it was the F4J(UK). They were painted a slightly different shade of blue/grey and often flown in the well-liked 'Bravo fit' with just a centreline tank instead of the usual Fletchers.
The crews liked them and 74(F) was a squadron which enjoyed tremendous esprit de corps; the F4J (or, even better, the F4S) was the Phantom the RAF should have had all along - instead of the most expensive, most powerful and slowest that was the FG1/FGR2!
Thanks everyone, for memories of the mighty 'Tomb', brought a smile to my face. I only managed half a tour on F4s, but it still managed to by turns terrify and stupify. Some scattered memories, in no particular order...
Northern QRA (when we had several), hooter going off at 5:45, somehow getting our sh*t in a sock and blasting off into a Scottish dawn after 6 minutes still tying our bootlaces...
Flying close enough to Russian ac to feel the prop vibration, and waving (!!) at the crewman positioning his giant box brownie before sliding across to the other side (to his great disapointment)...
5 day lock-in exercises, when you lived, breathed (and sometimes died) as a family, closer than most actual families. Checking in using comedy voices, or holding your nose - those who remember this know what I mean...
Being young and immortal in the most fantastic fighting machine ever built, alone and unafraid...
Being scared witless by the most fantastic fighting machine ever built, usually when it decided not to go where you wanted it to...
I could go on, and probably have too much already. Suffice to say, I feel privelaged to have flown F4s. On a completely unrelated subject, I don't like stickies - if a thread is as vibrant this one, it will stay high up the list anyway. However, an archive of favourite threads would be a good way to preserve the better prose and a book sounds like an awfully good idea. Gloria Finis.
On the topic of the F-4Js recovered from the desert; I remember reading an engineering report which stated that when they were being made airworthy, an access panel on one of the aircraft was opened a 'petrified lizard' fell out. The senior engineering officer had added the comment that "since these aircraft were previously operated by the US Navy, no wonder the lizard was petrified, I'd be scared sh!tless myself!"
BEagle old chap I know you won't mind a slight correction to your last thread.
Quote:
However, it was bought primarily as a mud mover, not as an AD fighter.
Not so. If you research the Defence White Papers of the day - as I had to once (won't bore you with the detail) you will find that the procurement decision for the F4 was for an air defence fighter. However, the cancellation of TSR2 left a capability gap which was then plugged by the F4 until Jaguar could enter Service. From the outset the intention was for the F4 to fill the air defence role in due course.
Great aircraft in either role - and as a recce bird too. More multi-role than Tornado ever was.
More multi-role indeed. However, the RAF in their wisdom turned it into a single-role AD fighter and made it irreversable by disconnecting and reallocating some of the pylon wiring. Now it appears the RAF have finally learned their lesson and are only interested in multi-role combat aircraft - makes sense if you only have a few to be able to use them in whatever is the priority role at the time.
Having flown all 3 marks of F4 in RAF service I can attest that one advantage of the Spey models over the J79 was the downward cant of the exhaust. Thus when returning to Akronelli from yet another disappointing attempt to marmelise the 180 Kt banner it was possible to cut a wake in the Med by steaming along at oh Christ not many feet.
Prizes for the man who cut the longest wake. Nil points for hitting the surface as we suspect at least one poor sod did.
Can anyone out there verify a story I once heard about an US Navy F4 being prematurely shot off a carrier with its wings still in the folded position. I have no idea if that is possible (sounds unlikely) or how it could be unnoticed by all the deck crew who scramble under, over and about a carrier deck but maybe it happened. I have my doubts that it would even be controllable but I never flew anything like that.
I remember back in the early 70s seeing a flight safety film on the subject of ejections. IIRC it was taken at McD's plant in St Louis where the camera crew had been set up to film the first (?) flight of the UK F4M. This was duly recorded and they kept rolling as there was another F4 about to get airborne on an airtest, Israeli-destined, I think.
Mighty F4 rolls, plugs in burners and rotates. And rotates. And rotates until it has zero horizontal speed and barely a few knots vertically. At this juncture the two bemused occupants opt to cut short their journey and return to mother earth courtesy of the ejection-seats. All the while the camera is recording the events, the F4 finally succumbs to gravity and crashes tail-first, still within the airfield boundary. The rear-seater makes his entry back to the ground not 20 feet from the camera! Stunning. The reason behind the incident was, I think, due to the tailplane not being connected properly to the return position after initial rotate. It had flown the porevious day and been checked out. I'm sure some of the F4 drivers here can explain the details...
This was followed by a quasi-weapons deployment shot, with US commentary along the lines of "...Here we are expecting to see the effects of the re-tard bomb at low level. What we see in actuality is the succesful use of the Mk blah-di-blah seats from two F4s..." The Phantoms came steaming in at low-level to take out a bridge somewhere, but unfortunately the retard bombs didn't function as per the manufacturers intent, exploding on impact just beneath the undersides of their deliverers. What a waste!
I also seem to remember an RAF F4 in Germany in 1974/5 taking off from Bruggen, in a rush to make a slot-time on the ranges, the primary a/c having gone u/s on the pan and the crew switching to the back-up. Guy in the tower, NBing the take-off, makes the classic call "Alpha 45, your wings are folding...." Not sure what the crew responded, as they were soon to be seen floating earthwards on the end of their parachutes whilst one of Aunty Betty's finest investments makes and undignified return whence it came.
When I was at Wattisham I worked with two fellow Riggers whom were at Bruggen at the time of the wing folding incident. I seem to recall that only one outer wing folded; the other being correctly locked down.
In all the rush nobody spotted that the wing fold lock tell-tale flag was (obviously) still sticking up.
I believe that after this incident all the tell-tale flags were painted day-glo orange.
After hearing their tale I always gave the wing a huge waggle during BFs and TRs!
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